Don’t lift the wit!
I’d like to give you a nice going away present. But first, you have to do your part posts one friend on Facebook. It’s funny of course, so it gets 30 likes and 40 comments. ‘He: “Drinking makes you look beautiful.” She: “I haven’t been drinking.” He: “But I have!” comes one more witty comment from another friend. Result? 30 likes
and 35 comments. Wow, they’re witty, you think. But these funny one-liners go on for a period of time and out of the blue, one fine day, you suddenly decide to ‘Google’ these one-liners and voila — you realise that they’re all lifted from Twitter!
There are youngsters who copy funny and witty one-liners from Twitter and other websites and set them as Facebook status messages and pass them off as their own. But this doesn’t go down well with those who dislike the concept of ‘stealing wit’ and not giving credit to the original source.
Talking about such ‘plagiarists’, student Ridhi R. says, “I recently found out that this girl with ‘clever’ updates was actually lifting them from Twitter! And I thought ‘so much for originality’! A lot of people on her friends list don’t know that she copies those updates and they keep appreciating her. And she never tells them that she didn’t come up with them! That’s when I stopped ‘liking’ her updates!”
Youngster Akshay R. gets ticked off when people copy funny quotes and don’t give credit. “If you are taking someone’s line, then it’s fine, but at least give them credit. There is this guy who lifts quotes from Twitter and when people ask him if they are original, he avoids answering them. Plagiarism sucks!” he says.
Student Sanjana Kumar believes that those who copy quotes are just attention seekers. “They should learn to give credit, ‘cos one day people will figure out that they didn’t actually come up with it,” she feels.
Echoes student of Commits Gurpreet Kaur Sidhu, “People who do this are just doing it for attention. They are probably not confident of their own thoughts and views.”
It can get really irritating when people lift quotes, says mass communication student Rohita Rambabu. “That status ends up getting 50 likes and everyone’s commenting on it. You think to yourself ‘do they think we’re stupid?’ The worst is when one e-mail is circulating and two or more people in your friends list pick up the same quote and put it up as their status,” she says.
Being witty is not everyone’s forte, but for those who’d like to post witty messages that are copied, do it by giving credit ‘cos sooner or later people will find out that they’re not original.
Post new comment